Not saying you're off-topic, cause you aren't. But I'd like to avoid this thread devolving into polemics about who will win the next console wars, if possible. If there was no active thread for it in this very section it'd be a different story.

Sentios wrote:The simplest one would be to stop thinking of reproduction as an innate right, even without near-immortality there's good reason to go that route when you consider the number of unfit parents.

That'd be pretty hard to put in practice. A system to determine "fit" future parents would likely become incredibly corrupt and even if it somehow wasn't, it's not like people with high IQ are guaranteed to be good parents, or people with felonies in youth are guaranteed to be bad parents. It'd be pretty hard to pick any universally accepted standards and some groups would always feel they get the short end of the stick.

Stanisław Lem wrote:I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.

Eugenics and reproductive rights is a pretty sticky thing, because you have to put standards somewhere.

I suppose you could always just tax those who have more than two kids heavily, except for those who happen to get triplets (or more) in one go, unless one of the parents is a "benefit" to society. This way you either have to have merit and/or be rich to multiply fruitfully, without setting a hard limit on those who do not.

One time when I was high, I thought I was in an ambulance dying. Turns out I was just eating sherbert. -stufflikehearts-

Not saying you're off-topic, cause you aren't. But I'd like to avoid this thread devolving into polemics about who will win the next console wars, if possible. If there was no active thread for it in this very section it'd be a different story.

Just wanted to get that out, I'm done there....There is something else I'm excited for (though right now it's only a rumor). There's supposedly an Armored Core movie (possibly anime or CG) in the works, due to be released this year.

I think the hardest part about legislating reproductive rights would be politics. China has a freaking billion people and thus the one-child policy and it's heavily frowned upon in the west. That may also have to do with the specifics of it's implementation. The day may come where it's there is no choice, though.

None of these has ever put much of a dent in the human population. You can't even find WW2 on a population chart. The reason there's six billion of us is because we multiply far faster than we die of any such causes. I think the black plague is the only singular event that's killed a good percentage of the population. Further, none of these are solutions to the overpopulation problem, they're just stuff that happens. I guess enough atom bombs would be a solution, but it's not really a good one.

And settling planets, especially exo-planets, is still sci-fi, while ridiculously long life spans increasingly is not.

Vegedus wrote:China has a freaking billion people and thus the one-child policy and it's heavily frowned upon in the west.

And China's policy is pretty mild compared to what some futurologists suggest for the future of humanity. Rural areas are excluded from being subject of the one child policy, as are ethnic minorities. And if you can pay the punishment fine (which admittedly is quite costly), you do even avoid jail. For a country like China that's milder than you'd expect it to be.

Well not at the scale we saw of them so far. But as you said, enough nuclear missles would put a large dent. A full scale nuclear war would still effectively annihilate most of humanity and it isn't as impossible to happen as some people think, just because the Cold War ended. Take the January 25, 1995 Black Brant XII incident, Russia's government isn't much more competent, than it was back then.

And natural disasters are a really broad range, gamma-ray bursts are technically a natural disaster and should one hit Earth even a biologically immortal human race would be unable to do much.

Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

Stanisław Lem wrote:I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.

Rival wrote:That'd be pretty hard to put in practice. A system to determine "fit" future parents would likely become incredibly corrupt and even if it somehow wasn't, it's not like people with high IQ are guaranteed to be good parents, or people with felonies in youth are guaranteed to be bad parents. It'd be pretty hard to pick any universally accepted standards and some groups would always feel they get the short end of the stick.

I never said high IQ, IQ isn't even a perfectly reliable indicator of success forget parenting ability. As far as it being hard to be put into practice... it's easier than convincing the average person to take a one way trip to another planet. Which is where we're headed since population can't grow infinitely more dense on the planet.

It should be noted that war has little effect population growth because the limiting factor of population growth is fertile females, while most war time casualties are males. Disease and famine also generally have the opposite effect on population growth that one would expect because people suffering those things end up having a larger number of kids so that even if only 1/3 of them survive to adulthood they'll still have a significant number of surviving descendents (same reason rodents have tons of offspring). This is one of the top reasons for the overpopulated developing world.

Sentios wrote:I never said high IQ, IQ isn't even a perfectly reliable indicator of success forget parenting ability.

I know you didn't, you didn't mention felonies either, I just mentioned them as factors that'd be likely to appear in a debate among politicians when implementing such a policy. Should they attempt it.

Last edited by Rival on Thu May 30, 2013 6:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

Stanisław Lem wrote:I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.